What It Costs the Worst Bank to Be Truly Evil

Friday, 22 March 2013 20:39

$16 billion. That's how much JPMorgan Chase has paid in fines, settlements and other litigation expenses in the last four years alone.

More than half of that amount, $8.5 billion, was paid out in fines and settlements as the result of illegal actions taken by bank executives.$8.5 billion is almost 12 percent of the net income the mega-bank brought in during the same period.

These figures comes from " JPMorgan Chase: Out of Control," an impressive analysis of the bank's performance by Joshua Rosner, an investment analyst at GrahamFisher. And there's more. Since Rosner published his report only last week, JPMorgan Chase has settled another dispute.

This latest agreement is with the trustee for customers of fraudulent investment firm MF Global. The MF Global deal included a $100 million cash payout from Chase, and an agreement to waive the $417 million in claims it had made against MF Global's clients. If you add in the full amount of this agreement, the bank has given up more than $9 billion in settlements since 2009.

Now we're over 12 percent just in payouts. Throw in all the other litigation costs and the total comes to well over 20 percent of the bank's net income in a four year period.